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Should I Use restic (forum.restic.net)?

forum.restic.net·Analyzed 3 days ago··Based on 14 sources

Discussions about and support for the restic backup program

Verdict

Worth it

Restic is a free, battle-tested open-source backup tool and its community forum is unusually helpful — a buy for technical users.

Confidence: Medium

Skip it if you want a GUI, vendor support, or predictable storage bills.

Free open-source backups with a great community forum; ideal for techies, wrong if you want a GUI or vendor support.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • Free

    Starting price

  • 14

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Free software; only storage backend costs money
  • Ease of use: 2/5. CLI-first; users still debate best GUI
  • Feature depth: 4/5. Encryption, dedup, compression, many storage backends
  • Support quality: 4/5. Active forum praised by users; no paid SLA
  • Security posture: 4/5. Encrypted repos; snyk-tracked rest-server flaw patched
  • $0 Price Open source; storage backend billed separately
  • Community forum Support No paid support tier
  • 110+ topic pages Forum activity Latest listing reaches page 110

Pricing

Open-source software

Free

  • Full CLI tool, no license fees
  • Bring your own storage: B2, S3, Wasabi, Glacier
  • Support via community forum
Best for and not for

Best for

  • Self-hosters and homelab admins
  • CLI-comfortable developers
  • Encrypted offsite backup to B2/S3
  • Many servers into one repository

Not for

  • Non-technical users wanting point-and-click backup
  • Businesses needing vendor SLAs or compliance sign-off
  • Anyone allergic to surprise cloud storage bills

Biggest gotcha

  • highBackblaze B2 users report unexpected bills from API transaction fees; estimate S3 PUT/GET costs first⁴
  • mediumS3 Deep Glacier: cheap storage, costly and slow restores⁵
  • mediumHelp depends on forum volunteer response times, not guaranteed support

Pros

  • Free and open source, backed by an active community forum¹
  • Scales from one machine to roughly 1000 clients⁸
  • Works with cheap backends: Backblaze B2, Wasabi, S3⁶
  • Active security discussions: ransomware, attacker-supplied data, key management

Cons

  • No official GUI; users still debate which third-party one to use⁷
  • Storage costs, not software, bite: surprise B2 and S3 API bills³
  • Community support only — no vendor, no SLA
  • DIY setup: users hand-write wrapper scripts and cron jobs14

Security

No formal security page; active hardening discussions, one snyk-tracked rest-server vulnerability patched, and a published chunking-protocol attack.

  • rest-server vulnerability patch timing questionedForum thread asks why snyk-tracked rest-server patch versions were released late.10
  • Chunking algorithm attack publishedGitHub issue documents an attack on restic's content-defined chunking algorithm.11

What users say

Users praise the forum's responsiveness and restic's reliability; complaints target cloud storage billing, not the software.

Methodology

Based on 20+ public sources: restic forum threads, Reddit discussions, GitHub issues, and a GitLab backup script.

Sources

  1. restic forumforum.restic.net
    official
  2. Is restic the right tool for me?forum.restic.net
    review
  3. Unexpected costs with Backblaze B2 backendforum.restic.net
    review
  4. How to estimate PUTS GETS for S3 pricing?forum.restic.net
    review
  5. S3 Deep Glacier, any experience with costs?forum.restic.net
    review
  6. Using Wasabi for offsite backups with Resticforum.restic.net
    review
  7. 2025 / best GUI for resticforum.restic.net
    review
  8. Rest-server repositories for some 1000 clients?forum.restic.net
    review
  9. Best Practices for restic repo securityforum.restic.net
    security
  10. Why were the patch versions for vulnerability released so late?forum.restic.net
    security
  11. Attack on content-defined chunking algorithm used by resticgithub.com
    security
  12. Restic or Kopia for Google Drive backup?reddit.com
    review
  13. Restic. My experience for what it's worthforum.yunohost.org
    review
  14. Restic Backups (wrapper scripts)gitlab.com
    review

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